Middle Eastern Archives

The Lemon Tree (Young Readers’ Edition): An Arab, a Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East by Sandy Tolan [in School Library Journal]

31 Jul, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Arab, Audio, Biography, Jewish, Middle Eastern, Middle Grade Readers, Nonfiction, Palestinian, Repost, Young Adult Readers

“I wanted to write a history book in disguise,” journalist and professor Sandy Tolan announces, “and to make it feel, throughout, like a good novel. Even though the story is true.” Tolan voiced his original; here Rami Medina makes his audiobook debut: his rich, youthful...

Where Butterflies Fill the Sky: A Story of Immigration, Family, and Finding Home by Zahra Marwan [in Shelf Awareness]

29 Mar, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Arab American, Children/Picture Books, Fiction, Memoir, Middle Eastern, Repost

Debut author/illustrator Zahra Marwan's inviting, evocative picture book, Where Butterflies Fill the Sky, presents her family's relocation from one desert to another on the opposite side of the world. Her poignant opening dedication, "To my parents, who should have never had to leave," immediately foreshadows...

City of a Thousand Gates by Rebecca Sacks [in Booklist]

22 Apr, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Israeli, Jewish, Middle Eastern, Palestinian, Repost

Lameece Issaq reads languidly, her voice an ongoing invitation to Rebecca Sacks’ debut in which so much happens, but by book’s end might feel narratively stagnant – not because of Sacks’ writing, but because Israel and Palestine remain relentlessly enshrouded in conflict. The opening credits wisely...

Apeirogon by Colum McCann [in Booklist]

11 Jun, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Biography, Fiction, Irish American, Israeli, Middle Eastern, Nonfiction, Palestinian, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW When Colum McCann first considered narrating his books, he offered to audition for his own National Book Awarded Let the Great World Spin: “...

Printed in Beirut by Jabbour Douaihy, translated by Paula Haydar [in Booklist]

15 Oct, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Lebanese, Middle Eastern, Repost, Translation

Farid Abu Shaar, a young man earnestly convinced of his own (unproven) literary genius, seeks a publisher for his red-notebook manuscript, The Book to Come. His publication attempts with Beirut’s publishing houses prove futile: “No one reads,” one publisher insists. Although his Karam Brothers Press...

The Home That Was Our Country: A Memoir of Syria by Alia Malek [in Library Journal]

26 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Arab, Arab American, Audio, Memoir, Middle Eastern, Nonfiction, Repost, Syrian, Syrian American

American by birth, Syrian by parentage, journalist and civil rights lawyer Alia Malek (A Country Called Amreeka) has the cultural and linguistic fluency to be both insider and outsider in either country. Through four generations of extended family stories – from her wealthy businessman great-grandfather...

Core Collection: Refugee Stories [in Booklist]

06 Jul, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, African, Arab, British, Cuban, Cuban American, European, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Iranian, Iraqi, Italian, Jewish, Lists, Memoir, Middle Eastern, Nonfiction, Repost, Syrian, Translation, Vietnamese, Vietnamese American, Young Adult Readers

More than 65 million people, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, have been forced to leave their homes. Whether they are made refugees in another country or displaced internally, 2017 UN data shows that “nearly 20 people are forcibly displaced every minute as a...

The Confusion of Languages by Siobhan Fallon [in Library Journal]

27 Feb, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Jordanian, Middle Eastern, Nonethnic-specific, Repost

After introducing a stupendous community of left-behind stateside military wives in her debut collection, You Know When the Men Are Gone, Siobhan Fallon presents in her first novel two women who have accompanied their U.S. Army husbands to Jordan. Shared circumstances ease Cassie and Margaret...

We Crossed a Bridge and It Trembled: Voices from Syria by Wendy Pearlman [in Library Journal]

06 Feb, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Arab, Audio, Middle Eastern, Nonfiction, Repost

As she did for Palestinians in Occupied Voices, Wendy Pearlman (political science, Northwestern Univ.) again gives agency to a population under siege, this time to Syrians. Fluency in Arabic provides Pearlman direct access to “hundreds of Syrian men, women, and children” of all backgrounds –...

Where Will I Live by Rosemary McCarney

27 Dec, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in African, Arab, Children/Picture Books, European, Lebanese, Middle Eastern, Myanmarese (Burmese), Nonfiction

Those eyes. Those piercing, don't-turn-away-from-me eyes. In horrific times of conflict and war, turning children into collateral damage seems to be the worst crime of all. Rosemary McCarney, Canada's Ambassador to the United Nations, gathers the faces of children made into refugees in too many countries...

Refugee by Alan Gratz [in School Library Journal]

13 Dec, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Arab, Audio, Cuban, European, Fiction, Middle Eastern, Middle Grade Readers, Nonethnic-specific, Repost, Young Adult Readers

*STARRED REVIEW The term "refugee" is constantly in the news. In direct response, Alan Gratz gets personal with desensitizing statistics, policies, and politics by giving names, families, and histories to three tweens fleeing three countries during three time periods. Each fits the "refugee" label but is...

Kingdom of Olives and Ash: Writers Confront the Occupation edited by by Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman [in Library Journal]

20 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Israeli, Jewish, Middle Eastern, Nonethnic-specific, Nonfiction, Palestinian, Repost

"We didn't want to edit this book," married Jewish authors Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman confess. "We didn't want to write or even think…about Israel and Palestine, about the nature and meaning of occupation." But Waldman's 2014 visit to her birthplace forced both to "pay...

A Word for Love by Emily Robbins [in Library Journal]

24 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Middle Eastern, Nonethnic-specific, Repost, Syrian

The arrival of an unexpected package inspires Bea to begin writing her story, "in the hope that [she] could do it justice, and clear [her] conscience." Years earlier, she traveled to an unnamed Middle Eastern country (certainly inspired by Syria, where debut author Emily Robbins...

Sonora by Hannah Lillith Assadi [in Library Journal]

18 Jul, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Jewish, Middle Eastern, Palestinian American, Repost, Young Adult Readers

Debut novelist Hannah Lillith Assadi's protagonist, like the author herself, is the daughter of a Palestinian refugee father and Israeli Jewish mother. Ahlam comes of age in the Arizona desert, physically safe from war but damaged by the bitter fighting between her parents that too...

This Is Not a Border: Reportage & Reflection from the Palestine Festival of Literature, edited by Ahdaf Soueif and Omar Robert Hamilton [in Booklist]

11 Jul, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Memoir, Middle Eastern, Nonfiction, Palestinian, Repost

*STARRED REVIEW Commemorating 10 extraordinary years of PalFest, the Palestine Festival of Literature, mother-son cofounders Soueif (Cairo: Memoir of a City Transformed, 2014) and Hamilton (The City Always Wins, 2017) gathered 47 literary luminaries to create this essential testimony, including Suad Amiry, J. M. Coetzee, Teju...

A Palestine Reader, Part II: Adult Books [in The Booklist Reader]

03 May, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Arab, Arab American, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Lists, Memoir, Middle Eastern, Nonfiction, Palestinian, Palestinian American, Repost, Short Stories, Translation

The unrelenting conflict between Palestine and Israel keeps the Middle East in the news. But for a fuller picture of the Palestinian and Palestinian-American experience than what the media can provide, here’s a starter reading list. For a list of recommended titles about Palestine for young, middle-grade,...

The Refugee Experience for Middle Grade and YA Readers [in The Booklist Reader]

13 Apr, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Afghan, African, Arab, Biography, Canadian, Canadian Asian Pacific American, Caribbean, Cuban, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Iranian, Iranian American, Iraqi, Italian, Lists, Memoir, Middle Eastern, Middle Grade Readers, Myanmarese (Burmese), Nonethnic-specific, Nonfiction, Poetry, Repost, Verse Novel/Nonfiction, Vietnamese, Vietnamese American, Young Adult Readers

This is the second in a two-part series of recommended books for youth about the refugee experience. For a list of picture books, click here. Canada, with her groovin' President, functional healthcare system, and more welcoming borders, is currently in the throes of "Month 13," the first month following...

Discover WeNeedDiverseBooks with Zeina Abirached’s A Game for Swallows

24 Jul, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Memoir, Middle Eastern, Translation, WeNeedDiverseBooks, WNDB.SummerReadingSeries2015, Young Adult Readers

Mike’s Place: A True Story of Love, Blues, and Terror in Tel Aviv by Jack Baxter and Joshua Faudem, illustrated by Koren Shadmi

12 Jun, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, British, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Israeli, Middle Eastern, Nonfiction

Most of this true, part of this is reasonable conjecture, all of it is electrifying. Filmmaker Jack Baxter arrives in Tel Aviv in 2003 to make a film that never happens. But on the night before his departure back to New York, he stumbles upon a...

The Olive Tree by Elsa Marston, illustrated by Claire Ewart

18 Feb, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Children/Picture Books, Fiction, Lebanese, Middle Eastern, Nonethnic-specific

"For many years the house next to Sameer's had stood empty ...

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